Perfect State

5

I stopped at the top of the stairwell.

“And?” Sophie asked, climbing the last few steps behind me.

We’d reached a door I hoped led to the rooftop, but it was locked by a chain. I entered Lancesight and drew upon the Aurora to—

No I didn’t. Damn it. Two centuries of having the power of creation at my fingertips was going to be difficult to reprogram.

“Here,” Sophie said, pulling something from her handbag as I left Lancesight. A very small handgun. “Plug your ears, emperor man.”

“That won’t do anything,” I said, but plugged my ears, remembering how loud the weapons had been earlier in the night. “Handguns are rewritten to fire only paint—”

A near-deafening blast from the handgun interrupted me. Since I hadn’t taken direct command of them this time, my mental boosts kicked in at the sudden explosion. I got to watch in slowed speed as the chain shattered. Sophie’s handgun was definitely not shooting out balls of paint.

“Those things aren’t supposed to work here,” I said, uncovering my ears as she put the handgun away.

“I’m good at doing things I’m not supposed to,” she said, then kicked the door open.

There’s no way she kicked that so solidly with those heels, I thought to Besk. She’s got a hack; either she has a force multiplier on her legs, or those shoes are an illusion.

No reply.

Besk?

The mental link was silent. When was the last time I’d heard him?

That seemed ominous. Should I run?

Don’t be foolish, I thought to myself. I’d survived for centuries without Besk looking over my shoulder. That said, I was a little more wary as I stepped onto the rooftop.

It was raining, but just a fine mist. “So,” Sophie said, walking across the roof. “Where you come from, is climbing steps considered a romantic date?”

“The roof is someplace we’re not supposed to be,” I said, joining her at the side of the rooftop, where a ledge prevented us from accidentally falling off. “I figured you’d like that.”

“We can’t go places we’re not supposed to be,” she said. “Each State, every digital inch of them, was made for us.” She hesitated. “But I doubt the Wode expected this of us, so I’m satisfied. Even if that hike up here was annoying.”

“You’re not winded,” I said. “You have physical boosts.”

She just smiled.

I took a deep breath of the wet air. How long had it been since I’d been outside in the rain? I always had force bubbles around me to protect from the weather.

“Maybe they shouldn’t tell us,” I said. “About our realities being simulations.”

“Don’t be dense. Ignorance wouldn’t be better.”

“I don’t know . . .”

“You should be angry about the lies, the falsehoods.”

“Why?” I asked. “They tell us the truth when we come of age, and everything they do is to make our lives better.”

“We’re like rats in cages,” she snapped, leaning down on the rail and looking out over the dark city, full of twinkling lights in the misting rain. “It’s a beautiful cage, but still a cage.”

“Perhaps,” I said, leaning down beside her. “But I can’t find it in me to be angry at the Wode. Without this system, you and I probably wouldn’t exist. Earth couldn’t possibly support such a high population otherwise. We live good lives. Every man is a hero, every woman a leader. It just . . .”

“Feels washed out?” she asked. “Like we’ve been living in a movie?”

I didn’t know what a movie was, but I nodded anyway. “Surely some of it has to be real though, Sophie. My achievements, my learning. Even within the false framework, I’ve accomplished things, saved lives.”

“Fake lives.”

“People. I protected them. Heroism is real.”

“Heroism? You can’t die, emperor man. What is there to be heroic about? They throw some little paper figures into the water, and you dive after them, proud that you’ve rescued a few when the Wode could make a billion more literally with the snap of their fingers—or even resurrect the ones that died. As for your ‘accomplishments,’ I assume they’ve dangled something in front of you, a special skill only you can learn and progress at?”

“We call it Lancing,” I admitted. “You’d call it magic. I’ve been searching for its deepest secrets.”

“For me, the carrot was the nature of the States themselves,” she said, heedless of how the rain was ruining her makeup and hair. “I wanted to know the truth of reality. That drove me to study, to learn. The more I did, the more I realized how deep their illusion went. They used even that against me, giving me more information bit by bit. To keep me interested, curious. They try so hard to make our lives seem meaningful.”

“Difficult to blame them for something like that.”

“It’s not like their lives are enviable either,” she said. “The Wode. They’re just caretakers. They eat bland soup every day and sit at terminals.” She tapped the railing. “I said that you should be angry. So should I. But to be honest, it’s hard for me to get mad at anything these days.”

“And that’s why . . .”

“Why I just do whatever I want,” she said. “I invent conflicts, spark wars. Latch on to anything that makes me feel. I had high hopes for hating you tonight, since the compatibility projections said we’d never get along.”

“Were they right?”

“No, unfortunately.”

“Unfortunately?”

“Like I said, conflict is fun.”

“I can punch you, if you’d prefer.”

We stood in silence, and I realized something. There was a good reason I hadn’t gone out in the rain recently. It was cold, and it was uncomfortable. I’d left my jacket and hat behind. Perhaps they would have helped.

“This is stupid,” I said. “I need to get this over with and go back to my people.”

“Ah yes. So typical.”

“Which means . . . ?”

“You fit the archetype,” Sophie said. “Here we’ve been having a deep conversation about the meaningless nature of our lives—yet you still want to rush back and be king.”

“I am what I am.”

“Which is what they’ve made you. You have your own Concept, as sure as any Simulated Entity. ”

“I’m real,” I snapped. “And I’m not going to simply abandon my kingdom because I’m having an existential crisis.”

“I suppose that is noble,” she said. “Manufactured nobility, brand name with a little copyright symbol in the corner, but still a cousin to the real thing.” She reached up behind her with both hands and undid the zipper on her dress.

“I . . . What are you doing?”

“This is what we’re here for, isn’t it?” she asked, pulling her arm out of one of the dress’s shoulder straps. “So the Wode will damn well leave us alone? Propagate the species, so the wheel can go around and around.”

“Here, in the rain?”

“Sure. It doesn’t have to be pretty; it just has to happen. We have sex in this little digital box, and the Wode will harvest our genes and splice together a new child. I’ll let you pick the kid’s initial trope. I’d probably end up choosing something downright horrible for them, just to be interesting.”

The dress came down around her bust, and she wore nothing underneath. She caught a glimpse of my surprised face as she reached back to pull the zipper down farther; it was stuck in the middle of her back. “What? Is female nudity new to you?”

“New? I had a harem at one point, Sophie.”

“How unexpected,” she said. “Men.” Her cheeks grew flush, though. “Misogynistic, horrible, brutish.”

“You’re thinking about how your youthful feminist self would react to you sleeping with a man who kept a harem.”

“Of course I am,” she said. “So long as I’m horrified by what I’m doing, I must be on the right track. Can you help me with this damn zipper? The rain . . .”

I walked over to help. I felt hot, despite the rain. I brushed my hand on her bare shoulder as I took the zipper. My heat and hers, mingling.

Lords, I realized. I haven’t wanted a woman this badly in years. Decades.

“I wish we could do something about this rain,” she said. “It is going to get distracting.”

“Back in my State, I’m very close to being able to control the weather. I’ll be all-powerful, once I’ve figured that out.”

“They’ll find something else for you to hunt,” she said. “They always do. It—”

The entire city shook.

I froze, the zipper worked most of the way down Sophie’s back. The city thumped again. The rain started falling more strongly for a moment, in a sudden unnatural way, as if someone had turned a shower on. It left the two of us soaked.

A third thump came, softer than the others. “That’s not natural,” Sophie said, turning, half naked, water streaming down her body. “What . . .”

Something loomed out beyond the darkened city skyline. Eyes burned red in a head as tall as the buildings. It lumbered through the darkness, blockish, skin reflecting the occasional ripple of lightning in the clouds above.

I groaned. “You remember I mentioned my nemesis?”

“Yeah. You still owe me half a story about that, I believe.”

“Well, he’s been promising me a new robot,” I said, hurrying along the rooftop toward the place closest to the machine. It was still distant, but pushed its way between buildings, walking directly toward us. Each step thumped.

“Wow,” Sophie said, joining me, holding her dress from completely falling off. “I don’t think people are supposed to be able to invade Communal States.” She was still mostly nude. I found the sight of her wet in the rain, and the death machine in the other direction, strangely appealing in a similar sort of way.

I feel young again, I realized. Like before the unification.

“Well?” she asked.

“I . . .”

“Breasts later, giant robot now. This nemesis of yours, he’s good at hacking?”

I forced myself to look up at her face. “Too good.”

“Yeah,” she said, pulling up her dress, now soaked through. “If he can hack a Communal State . . . Well, we’ve got two choices. We can either dodge him long enough for the Wode to come down on him for flagrant violation of borders, or we can just make our way to a different Communal State and get to business there. I’m inclined toward the latter.”

“No,” I said, listening to the thumps. Screaming had begun on the streets. “People are dying. I’m not going to leave that thing here and count on the Wode to stop it.”

“Really. You’re going to take on that? How?”

“I’ll find a way,” I said, striding toward the steps.

“You fantasy men are such boy scouts,” she said, trailing after me. “Wait, let me get this damn dress on. Being Liveborn won’t keep me from being arrested for indecency in this State.”

I waited by the stairs, shifting from one foot to the other as she pulled the dress the rest of the way up. Getting down from this building was going to be slow. “I should have seen this coming,” I said as she entered the stairwell. “I lost contact with my chancellor earlier. I’ll bet Melhi cut him off somehow.”

We started down the stairwell. I didn’t trust that box that was suspended from wires, not with Melhi hacking the State.

“Cut off your mental links, eh,” she said. “Dangerous. That should have warned you.”

“I was distracted.”

“So let’s go back to your State,” she said. “I could probably stomach the singing trees and the elves long enough to get laid.”

“I’m not leaving,” I said, still running down the steps. “He’ll tear the city apart to find me.”

“Why? What on earth did you do to him?”

I looked back at her. “I’m not sure.”

“What?”

“Come on. I’ll explain what I know as we walk down the steps. Remember how I’d visited that Border State? Well, I went into the village to meet him. . . .”